The Media Is Now Distorting The Words Of Obama Supporters Left And Right

In the last 24 hours, there’s been a rash of glaringly bad media distortions of Obama surrogates.It started yesterday on CNBC, when Maria Bartiromo interviewed Bill Clinton about his take on the economy and a host of other issues.

He was very vague on what should be done at the start of 2013 (when a host of tax cuts and spending cuts are due to kick in), but he was very clear that Obama should definitely NOT cave to Republicans and extend the Bush tax cuts permanently.

Correction: An earlier version of this blog post and its headline said that Mr. Summers specifically called for an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts. Mr. Summers made no such mention.

But apparently the other publications feel comfortable enough concluding that Summers saying we have to make sure we don’t take gasoline out of the tank is tantamount to “extend the Bush tax cuts.”

We don’t think it is the same thing, especially given how clear Larry Summers is in wanting the rich to pay more.

Incidentally, Summers’ interview with MSNBC is fantastic, and he talks about the absurdity of just thinking of the national debt as the burden on our children’s future, when lack of infrastructure spending or education spending is also a big problem.

We get that it’s fun to try to create divides in Obama’s message, but these examples are ridiculous.